Flow Reversal in a Horizontal Type Natural Circulation Heat Recovery Steam Generator

Natural circulation heat recovery steam generators (HRSG) are used in many applications for the thermal recycling of the waste flue gas. Many of these boilers are designed as a horizontal type HRSG (see fig. 1). The evaporator of such a steam generator is characterized by an array of parallel tubes with different heat input. The paper presents the results of a theoretical stability analysis for a HRSG with a vertical tube bank. For the horizontal type HRSG the static instability, namely the reverse flow was analysed. The study was done at low system pressures and under hot start-up conditions for the boiler. The investigations show the influence of the geometry, the system pressure and the heat absorption of the individual tubes in the evaporator on the stability of the boiler. The aim of the study was to find design criteria to avoid reverse flow in the tubes of the evaporator. Addition of flow resistance at certain locations of the evaporator can improve the stability. A higher stability will be also achieved by the homogenization of the heat absorption in the individual layers of the bundle heating surface.